


“we can share.”

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [74]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: Accidental Coming Out, Coming Out, Crushes, Gen, Male-Female Friendship, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, friends - Freeform, supportive friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:48:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24325276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: After Hazel's fifteenth birthday, George tries to persuade Hazel to break convention and ask him out, inadvertently revealing something about himself in the process.Canon Era (set two days after the Drowned Pearl)Written for the seventy-fourth prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Alexander Arcady/Hazel Wong (mentioned), George Mukherjee & Hazel Wong
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [74]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Comments: 1
Kudos: 28





	“we can share.”

“Did you have a good birthday yesterday, Hazel?”

I shriek when hands settle on my shoulders, only to realise that George is the one behind me, pressing his fingers into the material of my brand new cardigan. “Ah! George!”

He laughs and sits down beside me at the breakfast table in The Last Resort, the entire dining area empty of anybody else, smiling at me and squeezing my shoulder. “Sorry, Hazel. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“It’s alright,” I say awkwardly, toying with my breakfast cutlery and too embarrassed to look him in the eye. “My birthday was good. Thank you.”

With a chuckle, he poured himself a glass of water from the pitcher on the table. “What does being fifteen feel like, then?”

“Not much different from being fourteen,” I admit with a shrug. “I’m still far too small.”

“Westerners are unreasonably tall, Hazel. You mustn’t let Westerners be a measure or you’ll spend your whole life miserable!” The look in his eyes is warm and kind, and I think once again how absolutely lucky I am to now George. He might be wicked and mischievous and cunning to a fault, but he is also just  _ lovely _ . “Where’s Daisy?”

“Polishing off her half of the account of what happened with Antonia,” I say, and the murder settles back onto my shoulders like a physical weight. “I wanted a drink and she said that she understands that I need alone time to think about the murders. And that it’s all right.”

Knowing that no comfort will do good, George simply pulls a rueful face of agreement and says, “Other girls will pick up the baton, Hazel. She set a standard that will never be forgotten, and no one can take that away from her.”

“I know.” Reaching out to pour myself a glass of water, I ask, “Where’s Alexander?”

The look on his face is teasing and embarrassingly knowing when he says, “Still asleep. I kept him up half the night insisting that he finish  _ our _ account, and he can’t function on little sleep as I can.”

“Looks like Alexander and I have that in common, then.”

There must be something in my voice,  _ must be _ , or else George Mukherjee is psychic and that cannot be true because mediums and psychics and prophets and ghosts are a load of hogwash, according to Daisy and Lavinia. “You should go for it, you know,” he says.

Thankfully, my voice does not completely fail me and I manage to squeak out, “ _ What _ ?”

“Asking out Alex. He’s too awkward when it comes to romance to make any sort of move. So you ought to.” Although his face is kind and his voice is measured, I am instantly up in arms as violently as if it were Lavinia teasing me.

“ _ Me _ ask  _ him _ out? George, that is  _ dreadfully  _ improper!” I managed to shrill, recovering my voice just enough.

He waves a hand and sips on his water. “Propriety is bunkum, Hazel Wong. You do realise that there is an exactly nought chance that  _ Felix _ proposed to  _ Lucy _ , don’t you?”

“ _ Why are we talking about proposals? _ ” I hiss, feeling as if this was surely the most dreadfully embarrassing conversation that I had ever had in all my life. I just  _ know _ that my face is flaming red and my voice is an octave or two higher than usual, and I feel that I am about to burst at the seams from blushing. “George, stop it!”

“Hazel, please,” he says, though he does let up on the tone that makes me feel as if I am on the receiving end of one of Inspector’s Priestley’s interrogations, “one of us ought to buck up and ask him out.”

“One of us?” I echo, feeling as if I am inside an echo chamber of my own questions, my voice bouncing back at me from solid walls. He hasn’t answered any of my questions directly, each reply more obscure than the last, and he will  _ never _ answer this one. I watch as his eyes widen and his hand grips his glass so tight that I hear the push of the pads of his fingers dragging over the glass, and his shoulders lock up as our eyes lock in a moment of eye contact as tense as his posture.

“George,” I say, and again and again, “George, George! What do you mean by ‘one of us’?”

It feels like a whirlwind of input, a hundred things happening at once. My voice seems to spill from my mouth unchecked, and I am burningly aware of the  _ fear _ on George’s face and the way that his mouth hangs open in horror, and my thoughts roar like the surf inside my head. I have never been told a secret like that, not so momentous, not so accidental, and not in such a  _ public setting _ .

There is nobody around but anybody could walk in at any moment: Uncle Felix, Aunt Lucy, Daisy,  _ Alexander _ . I feel as if I should burst into flames from embarrassment, wanting to simply stop  _ existing _ in this moment that I am so horrifically unprepared for.

Then George’s jaw tenses and he grits his teeth, and his eyebrows draw together. I watch him make a choice (the  _ wrong one _ , I think desperately, hoping he will somehow hear,  _ wrong one, wrong one, wrong one! _ ), watch him take my silence as opposition, watch fear take over his face. He raises his free hand — whether it’s to hit me, push me, cover my mouth, cover his own, or guard his face from violence that I would never even  _ think  _ about, I never find out — and then the moment is shattered.

In his hand, there is a pop and a crunch and glass explodes all over both of us, showering us both with sharps and water. I watch red spill from a gash on his pale palm and mix in with the water that falls onto his shorts, and I hear the hammer of feet as waiters rush in from the kitchen and another set of much smarter shoes coming down the stairs.

“What is going ON?” roars Uncle Felix, seeing George and I barely responding to water and glass and blood dripping over both of us. It must be an unnerving sight.

“I can explain, sir,” says George smoothly, as if he is not bleeding and as if he did not announce his biggest secret and as if he was not just afraid of me doing  _ something _ . “Hazel walked in and sat down without announcing her presence, and I was still so half-asleep that it startled me so much that I clenched my fists and shattered the glass in my hand.”

How George and Daisy can just lie like  _ that _ , I will never understand.

“I never knew I was that scary!” I joke, hoping that I don’t sound as weak as I think that I do. Echoing what he said earlier, I say, “Sorry, George. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Standing up and closing his fist on the gash in his hand, he says, “Alright,” in a startlingly rough voice. “What ought we do, Mr Mountfitchet?”

Waving his hand tiredly, he said, “Go and clean up in the toilets. There’s only one on the ground level but I trust that you two won’t elope after being alone in a lavatory for five minutes.”

I feel myself blush as I squirm in my seat, but George says, “Naturally, sir,” and offers me a hand up.

I take it.

* * *

“Is that a measure of strength, do you reckon?” he asks as we walk to the toilets, both of us occasionally shedding shavings of glass from our summer clothes. “Imagine the business cards.”

All right, so he doesn’t want to talk about it.

“George Mukherjee, private detective,” I say, holding up my hands and frame them as if I am holding a small piece of cardstock, “can shatter a glass with one hand.”

“Marvellous.”

His voice is tight as we step into the small half-bath and he locks the door with the latch behind us. “Hazel—” he begins, just as I start to say his name.

“George—”

Trying again, he says, “Hazel—” and I interrupt him once again. I know  _ exactly _ what I want to say.

“George Mukherjee, let me  _ finish _ !” I burst out all at once, and he merely blinks in surprise. “Oh… for goodness  _ sake _ . I see what Daisy means when she says that boys are silly. Fancies for people aren’t mutually exclusive… things.” I have never been as coherent at monologuing as Daisy is, but I think I am getting better at it. “One doesn’t have to have anything to do with the other.  **We can share** .”

George blinks, realises, laughs. He laughs deeply, his shoulders shaking and his hands coming up to cover his face, and his entire body just falls into laughing out of sheer relief. I join in, and the two of us are giggling and leaning against the walls when he brings his hands away from his face. The cut on his hand has left a horror-flick effect of a rather grisly streak of blood on his cheek, but he still manages to look charming when he says, “You, Hazel Wong, are a marvel.”


End file.
